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I'll just pop down to the battery-swap station...

Published 14 November 2018

From Nigel Olliver, Darwin River, Northern Territory, Australia

Alice Klein's comparison between hydrogen-powered and battery-powered vehicles was interesting (8 September, p 20). In a country like Australia the limited range of either type of vehicle outside of the major cities will be a problem for some time to come, for example because of a lack of fast charging points.

But we can always learn from history, such as that of battery-powered buses in London a century ago (9 September 2017, p 35). They were turned around in minutes by swapping depleted batteries for fully charged ones.

If the manufacturers of battery-powered vehicles today could agree on a limited set of standard batteries, fuel stations could quite quickly offer battery swaps. This sort of service already operates for liquid petroleum gas (LPG) bottles – most users don't own a bottle but simply swap it for a full one when it is empty.